Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/432

418 Lester and Westbroom, who had assumed the title of Kings of Norfolk and Suffolk.

When Parliament met it was announced to it that the king had revoked all the charters he had been obliged to grant to the villeins; but the chancellor suggested whether it would not be well to abolish the serfdom altogether. This, probably, was the enlightened view of the king's better counsellors: it certainly was not his view of things on his journey; but it met with the response which was inevitable at that day. The barons declared that nothing should induce them to give up the services of their villeins, and that they would resist with all their power either violence or persuasion for that object; nay, were it even to save themselves from one general and inevitable massacre. It was plain the day for the extinction of serfdom was not yet come.

The Commons, indeed, attributed the insurrection to its true causes—to the long-continued exactions occasioned by the wars of the late reigns, which had impoverished the landowners, and deteriorated the condition of the villeins. These expenses, which had produced no advantage to the nation, had made the mass of the people wretched. The rapacity of the officers employed to collect these aids, and of the purveyors, who were but a species of licensed banditti, was unbounded. Besides, there were bands of real banditti, called maintainers, who in various parts of the country subsisted by robbery. These ruffians, such was the inefficient preservation of public order in the country, assembled in great bands, seized people, and especially women, for their ransoms, and killed such persons as attempted to resist. They abounded in Cheshire and Lancashire, made expeditions of a hundred miles or more, and carried off the daughters of men of property, and pretended they had married them; after which they sent to their parents demanding the fortunes to be sent to them on peril of the lives of the abducted victims. But, though the Commons pointed out these causes of popular discontent, and obtained an inquiry into the matter, with some reforms in the courts of law and the king's household, they were as far from thinking of the emancipation of the serfs as the lords. They made the danger of again raising them a plea for not yielding the king fresh taxes, but they were, after much reluctance, compelled to grant them. This being done, Richard proclaimed a general pardon, which eventually extended to the peasantry.

The king was now sixteen, and at this early age he was married to Anne of Bohemia, who herself was only fifteen. She was the daughter of the late Emperor of Germany, Charles IV., called Charles of Luxembourg at the battle of Poictiers, where he attended his father, the old blind King of Bohemia. Anne was thus granddaughter to the brave old blind monarch, and sister to the Emperor Sigismund. As has almost universally been the case with German princesses, there was a great boast and parade of the illustrious ancestry of Anne, but no money whatever. Nay, Richard, or rather the country, had to pay the expenses of her journey to England, though it was made from the palace, of one royal relative to that of another, particularly the Dukes of Brabant and Flanders, and under their escort. But, though high pedigreed and portionless, Anne was reckoned handsome, and, far better, was extremely good-hearted and pious. The king became deeply attached to her, and the English were extremely proud of her as the Cæsar's sister, of which they could never speak enough. She only lived twelve years as queen; but she won the affection of every one who came near her, was universally beloved, and long lamented under the name of the "Good Queen Anne;" and had she lived as long as her husband, would undoubtedly have preserved him from alienating the love of his people, and perishing as he did.

On the meeting of Parliament, soon after the king's marriage, the Duke of Lancaster solicited the grant of £60,000 to enable him to prosecute his claims on the towns of Spain, through the right of his wife, the Lady Constance, daughter of Don Pedro the Cruel; but after much debate the advance was declined. The circumstances of the country rendered it equally unadvisable that a large body of the military men of the realm should be withdrawn from it, and that money should be expended for foreign claims while the people were so sore on the subject of their heavy taxation. The duke was therefore compelled, however unwillingly, to postpone his expedition to Spain. His anxiety at this time was owing to the failure of the Earl of Cambridge, who had been sent out to support the King of Portugal against the King of Spain. The Earl of Cambridge had carried over a small but brave army to Portugal, the Duke of Lancaster promising to follow him with a greater force; but his embassy to Scotland, and the breaking out of the Wat Tyler insurrection, had prevented this; and Ferdinand, King of Portugal, finding himself disappointed of the duke's aid, and fearing to be overcome by Spain, had made peace with John of Castile, greatly to the chagrin of the Earl of Cambridge, who had made a marriage alliance between his son John and the only daughter of the King of Portugal, both mere children. On this peace being concluded, the Earl of Cambridge returned to England, having effected nothing towards the establishment of the claims of his brother, John of Gaunt, but, much in opposition to the King of Portugal, had brought away his son. This led afterwards to the divorce of his son's young Portuguese wife, by dispensation from the Pope, and her marriage to the King of Spain. Thus the King of Spain not only maintained himself on the throne of Castile, in defiance of John of Gaunt, but the King of Portugal dying, he laid claim in right of his wife to that kingdom. These were the circumstances which made Lancaster eager to pass over and assert his claims, but at this juncture without effect. He had only, however, to wait a few years for a more favourable opportunity.

England was at this moment about to undertake the support of the very principles of freedom and popular independence in Flanders which it had so sternly put down at home. Flanders, as the earliest manufacturing and trading country, had, as we have seen, speedily displayed a democratic spirit. It had expelled its ruler, who resisted, and endeavoured to crush all tendency towards popular rights. Though Jacob van Artavelde, the stout brewer of Ghent, had fallen, yet that high-spirited city had maintained a long career of independence. Philip van Artavelde, the son of Jacob, warned by the fate of his father, had, during his youth, kept aloof from popular ambition, and adhered to a strictly private life. But the people of Ghent becoming sorely pressed by the Earl of Flanders, and its very existence being at stake, Philip, no longer able to suppress the spirit of the patriot born